


Tripping Up, Falling Down

by Raven2547



Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Gen, Josh is clumsy, No Plot/Plotless
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 15:42:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9332042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raven2547/pseuds/Raven2547
Summary: The point is, Faraday is a clumsy fool.





	

"I just don't see," Goody said from somewhere to Joshua's right, "how a man so good with a pistol can be so damn accident prone." 

"It's a gift," Faraday said, rolling over. He reached down and pulled his foot out of Horne's bag's strap where it was tangled around his ankle. He /was/ walking towards the tree where all the horses were gathered up for the night to whisper a few tidbits to Jack when he had fallen down over all the camping gear. Vasquez was still laughing from his spot on the other side of the fire and Red was showing off a rare smile. The Irishman couldn't see Billy or Chisholm, but he assumed they were all having a nice laugh too.

"How many is that this week?" Chisholm cut in, reaching down to give Faraday a hand up. Josh nodded at him and clamored, carefully, over the pile and continued on towards the horses.

"This week?" Horne said good-naturedly, rubbing the head of his ax over a whetting stone, "Today's count is up to thirteen on its own." The group shared another laugh at his expense.

Really, they were exaggerating just a bit. Ever since Josh was a kid he'd always been more clumsy than your average bear, and as an adult it hadn't exactly got better. When he was around twelve he was supposed to help the local church put a new roof on by carrying the thatch and shingles up the ladder for the men and he not only fell off the ladder more than five times but also the roof itself twice. He was that toddler everyone wanted to wrap in a blanket so they didn't die just by exiting the house. 

As long as he could remember, Josh had been falling over things. 

Before Rose Creek his reputation was that of a notorious gunslinger, expert marksman, fantastic lover, and a damn good gambler. After Rose Creek it was even better, but now a lot of people knew Joshua Faraday and not just the man behind the mugshot. Sure, on the way to the little town and even in the week leading up to the big fight he'd been able to pass off his minor lapses (falling up the stairs, getting stuck in Jack's stirrups, falling over a barstool...) as a bit of drunkenness or excitability, but now the other six knew. 

When he woke up in Rose Creek, and after he was cleared to move, he immediately exited the second floor room and then woke up at the bottom of the stairs. It was not the last time he fell down those stairs. Everyone was very concerned the first two times it happened, thinking he wasn't quite healed or he'd taken permanent disability from the explosion, but after the fourth time he fell down the simple, wide steps and popped up at the bottom yelling "I'm fine!" they started to get an inkling. 

Days went by and the town was repaired and more people began to see Josh Faraday. Originally the townsfolk were slightly mystified by most of the seven, but you can't really be afraid of a man who just risked his life for your town and children and also trips over a bucket in the middle of the road. Or falls down four steps of stairs while gripping the railing. Or comes into the general store (still under reconstruction) and not only catches his foot on a doorframe but also falls through the only remaining hole leading to the cellar eight feet below. 

The point is, Joshua Faraday is a clumsy fool. In the weeks after Rose Creek, while Chisholm convinced the others to ride with him as a pseudo vigilante crew, the others slowly realized that he drank just enough and in front of enough people to plausibly say he had an incident because he was drunk--but really he was absolutely incapable of remaining on his own two feet for longer than an hour at a time. 

Days out of Rose Creek this realization turned into a group joke. Red started making tally marks on a strip of leather from his belt for every fall Faraday took while Horne tried to keep up the pretense of Faraday's drunken lunatic act. Once he realized they'd caught on Josh shook his head and the amount of liquor he imbibed on a daily basis halved itself. 

Gradually, as they kept traveling, the group realized that it wasn't just falling. Sure, Faraday fell over literally anything in his path at any given moment, up to and including his own feet, but he also had serious problems carrying anything. Given his problem with walking in general they weren't exactly jumping at the chance to give him extra problems, but he frustratingly seemed to simultaneously know about his clumsiness and also be in denial about it. He consistently volunteered to carry things or help somebody out and they, not wanting to be rude or some other misguided attempt at camaraderie, didn't want to warn him off. 

Once Goody was sitting to clean out his rifle and asked, without thinking, for Faraday to get in his bag for a swab. Joshua got up, nobody paid him any mind, got in the bag, and started walking over. Then he fumbled the small kit Goody carried, tripped on the air, and landed half in the fire. Chaos ensued to the sounds of Faraday yelling "I'm okay!"

It got worse in towns. They didn't want to point out a weakness in the group by calling out Faraday, but when he tried to carry more than two drinks at a time somebody had to step in. Billy bit the bullet. Or... at least he tried? As the Asian man approached him, Faraday grinned and went to hand him two of the five drinks in his hands and consequently spilled three of them down Billy's shirt. To his credit, Billy just turned around and sat back down at the table while Faraday hastily set everything he was still carrying down, turned around to get a towel, and tripped over one of the chair legs sticking out to fall face first on the floor. 

"If you say you are alright I'm going to step on you," Vasquez threatened, leaning down to whisper in the Irishman's ear. He helped Faraday up and forced him to sit while he went to get a towel instead. 

There was no escaping Joshua's tornado of misfortune. Anywhere he went, whoever he interacted with, nothing was safe. So many fires had been prematurely extinguished by his helpful acquisition of water but accidental dumping. They pulled him out of rivers when he fell down a slope, out of trenches when he fell in, and just laughed when he spilled all the canteens on his way back from filling them. 

Jack, the horse, was inordinately used to this. A lot of horses spooked or ran off when their rider fell off unexpectedly, but Jack just turned around to come back for him. If Joshua was caught in the stirrup the horse stopped running almost immediately, huffing out annoyed sounding breaths over Faraday's protests ("I'm fine!"). 

Jack being Joshua's own divine babysitter was fantastic. A lot of times when Faraday would've taken a nasty fall it was the horse that grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him back in. When they reached the Grand Canyon, standing on the edge and staring down, nobody noticed Faraday taking an idiotically close look over the edge until there was a short scream followed by a rocky scuffle--Jack had grabbed Faraday by the seat of his pants just as he'd been slipping down a crumbly rock. 

It was outrageous how many close calls the gambler had with death just because of his own clumsiness. The only thing they had to be thankful for was that, aside from that first fall after the battle of Rose Creek, Josh rarely ever hurt himself when falling. He knocked himself out going down those stairs and he constantly was sporting bruises all over himself, but it was not often he had something seriously wrong with him. 

In a fight he got better. Vasquez and he would go back to back again and again, Faraday never tripping over his own or the Mexican's feet by some miracle. He was an excellent marksman still, even if he was a klutz off the battlefield. For some reason if he was under a hail of bullets his feet could find their way anywhere without once falling out from under him, but the minute he was safe it's like they wanted to make up for lost time. On the harder days, when he fell over the slightest whisper of a breeze, some of them wished they were in a fight more often.

**Author's Note:**

> It is a headcanon of mine that Josh is a bit clumsy. Idk why I just feel it in my bones that he falls up the stairs and shouldn't be trusted to carry trays.


End file.
